When PayPal first launched in the summer of 1998, some said it was too ahead of its time to take off. Founders Max Levchin, Peter Thiel and Luke Nosek conceived of the service as a vehicle for sending money between Personal Digital Assistants and other mobile devices. But, few people at the time had smart phones, and even fewer wanted to use PDAs to make payments. Later, the trio decided to turn the service into an online bank. That didn’t fly either.

Ten years later, however, PayPal is finally poised to fulfill its initial destiny. The company, which will celebrate its 10 year anniversary June 23 , has grown from a niche player in the payments market to the most popular alternative to long-established leaders Visa and MasterCard.